The tribal languages of Arunachal are facing serious threat of extinction. Altogether 82 tribal languages are spoken in the state and many of them are on the verge of being extinct. However, worryingly the tribal community does not seem to have woken up to the harsh reality and no proper steps have been initiated by either any tribe or government of Arunachal to save the dying tribal languages. The languages of small communities like Meyor and Bugun face the biggest threat. Dwindling population along with the onslaught of Hindi and Assamese languages are gradually giving slow death to the enigmatic tribal languages. According to the year 2009 UNESCO Atlast of the World’s Languages in Danger data, 26 languages of Arunachal have been identified as endangered. What is worrying is that even languages of largely populated tribal groups like Adi, Galo, Nyishi too have been categorized as unsafe by UNESCO due to the heavy influence of Hindi language. Today majority of young Arunachalee tribal prefer to converse in Hindi, even at their own home and many of them do not know how to speak in their own mother tongue. If the present trend continues, linguistic expert believes that most of the tribal languages will get extinct in the next 50 years. The whole problem started with the Hinduinization of state which began after 1962 Indo-China war. Having tasted bad defeat at the hands of Chinese in 62 war and facing rebellion in other NE states like Nagaland, Manipur the central government under leadership of then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru started the process of Indianizing the state of Arunachal. Large number of Hindi speakers along with Hindi teachers was pushed into the state and with that the process of slow death of tribal culture began. Later years in another major step which contributed to the worsening of situation, the government of Arunachal in the 80s introduced Hindi as main language right from the primary school level. While other North Eastern ethnic groups like Mizo, Naga, Manipuri (both tribals and Meitie), Khasi, Boro, Mishing etc have managed to safeguard their language and culture, sadly the tribal groups of Arunachal have miserably failed on that account. “Historically Mizo, Naga, Manipuris and to a certain extent Boro’s have all fought strongly for their cultural and linguistic identity. Therefore government of India treads carefully and do not dare to meddle with these ethnic groups. But they seem to have taken people of Arunachal for granted and therefore is not serious about saving unique tribal languages,” said Prof Prof Scott C Delancey, head, department of Linguistic, Oregon University, USA who recently visited Rajiv Gandhi University, Doimukh. Prof. Scott further added that sense of patriotism towards own culture and language is missing in Arunachal. “It is great to learn Hindi and English as these are most popular languages spoken in India. But one needs to preserve their mother tongue and should be proud of their culture. Too much of outside influence is diminishing the great tribal culture and tradition of Arunachal,” continued Prof. Scott. Lisa Lomdak of Rajiv Gandhi University, who has carried out series of researches, in her finding claims that tribal languages of Arunachal show serious signs of being endangered mainly due to negligence and faulty provisions of the governance which have not facilitated the mother tongues of tribal’s to be functional and not useful outside the home domain. While Hindi is the common lingua franca, however, sadly the Arunachalee version of Hindi are also below standard and therefore it does not help them in anyway. “Once myself and another Arunachalee friend was discussing in Hindi while buying some stuff at Sarojini Market, New Delhi. All of a sudden the shopkeeper who was a native mainland Indian asked us, “Bhaiyya aap logon ka basha Hindi jaisa lagta hain, which language you are conversing?” We both laughed at each other. This is the problem. We are neither good in Hindi nor in our own tribal languages and seriously we don’t know whom to blame,” shares a young Arunachalee. With the experts presenting gloomy picture for survival of tribal languages in the long run, it is time the community based organizations including their student wings take steps before it’s too late. The community based organizations can play big role in this regard. They need to shed their egos and come together to work unitedly to save the dying tribal languages. Time is running out for the tribal communities.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 09:44:10 +0000
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